This Kickstarter is for Oculus Rift, described as "the first truly immersive virtual reality headset for video games." This includes endorsement quotes from id Software's John Carmack, Epic's Cliff Bleszinski, Unity's David Helgason, and Valve's Michael Abrash and Gabe Newell (thanks Rob). Word is:

Oculus Rift is a new virtual reality (VR) headset designed specifically for video games that will change the way you think about gaming forever. With an incredibly wide field of view, high resolution display, and ultra-low latency head tracking, the Rift provides a truly immersive experience that allows you to step inside your favorite game and explore new worlds like never before.

We're here raising money on Kickstarter to build development kits of the Rift, so we can get them into the hands of developers faster. Kickstarter has proven to be an amazing platform for accelerating big and small ideas alike. We hope you share our excitement about virtual reality, the Rift, and the future of gaming.

Flatline wrote on Aug 4, 2012, 02:36:... filtered through your ipad/smartphone/tablet, and pumped back into your goggles

Why not simply head mount an iPad 3? The 3D effect should be pretty good with the iPad held about a foot away with some sort of vertical divider between the eyes. While not exactly the "wrap-around" widescreen effect of the Oculus, the resolution would be far superior at 1024x1536 per eye. The iPad even has built-in gyros which might reduce the number required for the headset mount... and, it's wireless! Of course, it would probably be a laggy slideshow pumping hi-res data from your PC to iPad over wi-fi. Still, I'm sure the new iPad has the power to run something like Quake3 on its own. All the iPad needs is some type of wireless controller.

eRe4s3r wrote on Aug 2, 2012, 13:44:It can never be true 3D when you have a flat screen. For true 3D you need dynamic focus depth. Ie, your eyes can focus on any part of the scene and it seamlessly shifts the focus to there. As long as this does not happen there is no real 3D.

Even if both eyes get different perspective and thus pseudo 3D, you can not focus on any part of the scene - the focus would be infinite (like it is now on a normal screen) and thus, not real 3D.

Exactly. And when I try to focus on something that is out of focus, or when my eyes experience infinite focus, that's when the headaches start.

It looks awesome, but half the population can't use it until there's some kind of eye tracking.

Edit:

On the flip side, hook one of these up to a high resolution camera, filtered through your ipad/smartphone/tablet, and pumped back into your goggles, and we're one step closer to gargoyles from Snow Crash.

I know people who would give organs or major limbs at this point to walk around in permanent augmented reality.

It's purely a proof of concept at this stage, the consumer version is targetting a min of 1080p from panels such as the Toshiba 2560x1600 6.1" IPS panel.

As Carmack says, the prototype is for the hacker/maker crowd and for devs to start building support.

I remember playing on one of those arcade machines except it was a flight sim, I was totally blown away this has been a long time coming. Imagine playing an RTS game and literally being in the clouds looking down etc.

He didn't say screen size, he said viewing distance, and normally the closer you are the easier it is to see pixelation. The retina display iPhones are 960x640 and are meant to be viewed from at least 1 foot away.

In this case, the screens are so close to your eye that they're ought to be even smaller than an iPhone, so the pixel size might be reasonable. And they say the final version should be higher resolution than the development kits.

According to the question section at the bottom the consumer release will be higher res.

"While itís true that the developer kit uses a relatively low-resolution screen (1280x800), we promise it delivers a compelling, immersive 3D experience. And to be clear, we plan on improving the resolution of the screen for the consumer version. Stay tuned for more details!"

I was initially excited about the Oculus, but after digging deeper, not so much... It doesn't work with glasses, and is extremely low-res at only 640x800 per eye. According to John Carmack, it appears much lower res than that, and is very pixelated since your eyes are so close to the panel.

Still, I'm happy this Kickstarter is succeeding, and I do plan to buy one... But, I think I'll hold onto my $300 for the much higer-res consumer version.

Beamer wrote on Aug 2, 2012, 15:01:Yeah, I remember a gun, too, not an axe or crossbow, and seem to remember the arena being larger. I feel as if the gun fired almost exactly like the Quake grenade launcher. And yes, the guy I played with didn't get it, either, so I massacred him. He was off staring at pterodactyl while I arced shots at his head.

Same here, I remembered a having a gun. I admit I didn't play it much like a game either, I spent more time wandering around and looking at the pterodactyl. For the amount of money it cost I'm going to play the way I want to damnit.

NegaDeath wrote on Aug 2, 2012, 12:33:When I was a kid I tried a 3-player VR game that was playing at a local fair. It was the kind with the big mounted headsets that had full directional tracking. They even locked you in a booth to keep you from walking away by mistake. As it was 25ish years ago you can imagine the 3D "world" it presented was incredibly primitive. Regardless my young mind was still blown by the concept. When I see some progress is finally being made on a commercial version I get excited. Forget Doom, imagine playing a game like Amnesia on this.

Was it the two player one with a pterodactyl flying around? Probably. I played it once, $5 for 5 minutes or something insane.

There was a similar setup at the local mall here around 1995-96ish. I worked at Radioshack in the mall at the time and we got to play it free. I remember it ran on two 486's. The arena looked similar, but it wasn't melee and crossbows. You had a gun, and you held a gun like controller and stood in a similar ring type thing. On the controller, the trigger fired the gun and there were buttons on the back to move forward and backwards. I played against some guy that didn't get the whole 3D/VR concept. He just ran around in straight lines where I was ducking behind cover, peaking around the sides of boxes and completely owning him.

Yeah, I remember a gun, too, not an axe or crossbow, and seem to remember the arena being larger. I feel as if the gun fired almost exactly like the Quake grenade launcher. And yes, the guy I played with didn't get it, either, so I massacred him. He was off staring at pterodactyl while I arced shots at his head.

NegaDeath wrote on Aug 2, 2012, 12:33:When I was a kid I tried a 3-player VR game that was playing at a local fair. It was the kind with the big mounted headsets that had full directional tracking. They even locked you in a booth to keep you from walking away by mistake. As it was 25ish years ago you can imagine the 3D "world" it presented was incredibly primitive. Regardless my young mind was still blown by the concept. When I see some progress is finally being made on a commercial version I get excited. Forget Doom, imagine playing a game like Amnesia on this.

Was it the two player one with a pterodactyl flying around? Probably. I played it once, $5 for 5 minutes or something insane.

There was a similar setup at the local mall here around 1995-96ish. I worked at Radioshack in the mall at the time and we got to play it free. I remember it ran on two 486's. The arena looked similar, but it wasn't melee and crossbows. You had a gun, and you held a gun like controller and stood in a similar ring type thing. On the controller, the trigger fired the gun and there were buttons on the back to move forward and backwards. I played against some guy that didn't get the whole 3D/VR concept. He just ran around in straight lines where I was ducking behind cover, peaking around the sides of boxes and completely owning him.

Cutter wrote on Aug 2, 2012, 12:23:You really want to wear one of these things for hours at a time? Can't see your controls. Knocking shit over when you reach for a drink/food/smoke. No thanks. And the only thing it's really practical for are FPS' and even then I can see some limitations and problems with it. It's like every other impractical gadget. It's neato for a while but after a few weeks you'll never touch it again. And that says nothing of how the reality will likely be only a handful of developers utilize it for a handful of games.

eRe4s3r wrote on Aug 2, 2012, 13:44:It can never be true 3D when you have a flat screen. For true 3D you need dynamic focus depth. Ie, your eyes can focus on any part of the scene and it seamlessly shifts the focus to there. As long as this does not happen there is no real 3D.

Even if both eyes get different perspective and thus pseudo 3D, you can not focus on any part of the scene - the focus would be infinite (like it is now on a normal screen) and thus, not real 3D.

I wonder if they might not end up having some trademark issues with Trion. Rift (the MMO) has different flavors of Oculus mobs and they occupy a somewhat similar market, game vs. game peripheral. You see frivolous trademark suites filed all the time for far less related markets.

I don't always drink carbonated Mexican rat piss, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.